


Slanted purple shadows on the dark temple's walls

by Gammarad



Series: Writing Rainbow Works [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Faking Intimacy as Cover, Thule (Star Wars), Undercover as Master and Slave, Unresolved Sexual or Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 04:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20500784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: The Hero of Tython takes Lord Scourge on an undercover mission to find what may or may not be a new incarnation of the Emperor.





	Slanted purple shadows on the dark temple's walls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wednesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wednesday/gifts).

> _**Lord Scourge:**_ _I now understand why your Council tries to control your pleasure as well as your anger. Pleasure is a far more powerful motivator._  
**Jedi Knight: **Jedi have no need for comfort or amusement. We're beyond self-indulgence.  
_**Lord Scourge:**_ _ All beings crave what they do not have. Do not pretend you are different. I still remember the feel of sunlight on my skin. The scent of favorite foods. The color of my first love's eyes._  
**Jedi Knight: **The Emperor took all that away from you. Don't fool yourself into believing you can get it back.  
**_Lord Scourge:_** _At least I have the satisfaction of knowing he paid for what he took from me._
> 
> (From the companion conversations in SWTOR)

When the Jedi had killed the Emperor on Dromund Kaas, there was still a part of Vitiate that lived on. Lord Scourge would find that part, and he and the Jedi would go and destroy the monster piece by piece until every last remnant was wiped from existence. 

The Emperor could not resist taunting Scourge, the traitor, to come and be defeated along with the Jedi. No matter how many times they won, the Emperor would never believe he could truly lose. 

Scourge would not rest until he had proven Vitiate wrong about that.

One night not long after, he had a dream that showed him Thule. The Emperor had taken a body there, he saw. A young human girl, strong in the Force and innocent enough that it would take some time for his essence to corrupt her to her death. The vision showed him a cantina in the capital city of Hurom, near the ancient Sith Temple that the city had been built around. 

It was not what he had expected. The Emperor's spirit would usually return to his Servants, wait for a hollowing ceremony to prepare a receptacle. But it was well within the Emperor's power to take an unprepared body. It took longer, was more effort for him, but he had done such things in the past. He told the Jedi what he had seen, and she was skeptical.

"You could have a dream like that because you sensed the Emperor had not completely been killed by what we did on Dromund Kaas," she said.

"That may be the source of the vision," Scourge agreed.

"Not all dreams are visions."

"The Emperor is in that girl on Thule. The planet is in danger. If you won't go, I will take care of it alone."

"I didn't say I wouldn't go." The Jedi shrugged. "But Thule. There's no way they'd be okay with a Jedi just showing up." She was correct, Scourge had to admit to himself. Thule had been inhabited by the Sith race for centuries, and while a backwater of the Empire, its cities were centered on places of strong Dark Side power. 

Nevertheless, the accuracy of her objection created no insurmountable obstacle. "You have the strength to overcome their objections."

"It's likely I'd have to kill people to 'overcome their objections,' and that would only play into the Emperor's hands." 

"What then do you propose?" Scourge noticed that when he asked this, she flinched minutely. There was something about what she was about to propose, then, that she found uncomfortable. Or thought he would find uncomfortable - perhaps both.

He had told her he did not have emotions, not like one who was still mortal, but she had never entirely understood the implications. He would not find anything uncomfortable. Discomfort was beyond his reach now.

When she told him her plan, however, he decided she was not uncomfortable _enough_ with it. 

"You wish to pose as my slave, Jedi?" He put scorn into his voice. "You would not be able to maintain such a pretense." 

"I'm not a bad actress." The Jedi winked at him. "All I'd have to do is follow you around in a dancer's outfit and do a few moves." She demonstrated a surprisingly credible cantina dancer's shimmy. 

"What if a patron of the cantina wishes more personal services?" 

"Then you tell them I'm not available for things like that."

Scourge paused. Perhaps he could dissuade her from this plan. "And if I said instead that you were? Could you be convincing?" He made his lips curl disdainfully, hoping she would set aside the idea and return to a more straightforward approach. 

He could see the thought set her aback, and more, there was an underlying Force surge as well -- when he'd been mortal, he would have known what that meant, but as it was he sensed only the strength of such reactions, not their content. 

Nevertheless, the Jedi mastered herself and riposted. "Some Sith might play tricks like that to entertain themselves despite the damage to the mission, but you have never been such a Sith, my friend." 

They would do as she had decided, then.

* * *

The thing she hadn't expected was how cold she felt wearing a dancer's outfit. It didn't affect her, of course, Jedi didn't succumb to such simple discomforts as low ambient temperature, but she hadn't been ready for it and the surprise made it more difficult. 

Despite the chill, she was doing an excellent job of being smiley and bubbly and friendly. She chatted with the bartender and then doused poor Scourge with contrived affection that he deigned to respond to with an artificial smile of his own. His acting ability was paltry but he was putting forth an effort and the role she'd assigned him didn't require any more out of him than he could manage.

Their target tottered over in shoes she obviously did not know how to balance in properly. The Jedi winked at her and took her elbow, steadying the human woman helpfully. "Hi, I'm Coil," she said in a chirpy tone. "What's your name?"

"Tuyet. Thanks for the save. What can I get you to drink?" 

"I'll have juice, and whatever ale you think is best for my master." 

Tuyet glanced over at Scourge. "I'll be right back with your drinks." She laid her hand lightly on the Jedi's arm. "I'll make sure it is something he will like. No need to worry."

There was something in the girl, something not meant to be there, the Jedi had been sure when she touched her elbow and even more sure when the girl's hand touched her arm, but it didn't feel quite the right sort of dark to be the Emperor, no matter what Scourge had dreamed. 

Too much to be a coincidence, though. It was right that they were here. They needed to be.

Waiting for Tuyet to return with their drinks, she sat on Scourge's lap, leaning her head close to his so they could converse without anyone else able to overhear. She felt his lips move against her cheek. In this position even lip-reading would be impossible. 

"I sense in her what we came here to find."

The Jedi brought Scourge's hand to her lips to cover her words from observation. "Not quite," she whispered into his palm. "Not enough darkness in her to be him."

"Centuries I have known his presence and you doubt my word." 

"You put too much faith in your dream."

"You are too distracted by your game. You seem to be permitting yourself to have _fun._"

"That should please you. Don't you remember when you told me I shouldn't let the Order keep me from enjoying myself? That we all crave what we can't have?"

He didn't answer. In the gap while she waited for him to say something, Tuyet brought their drinks. She slid off Scourge's lap and accepted the two tall glasses, sniffing each and handing him the ale while she took a sip of the juice.

"Is everything to your taste?" Tuyet asked Scourge.

"It is acceptable," he said with a nod. 

The Jedi knew he couldn't taste the drink, but he was doing a reasonable job of feigning enjoyment. The slight frown on his face could easily be interpreted as the concern of a visitor to a strange place.

After their second drinks, Tuyet slipped out a side door. She was good at doing so when no one was looking; if the Jedi hadn't been tracking her odd signature through the force she might not have noticed at all. 

Scourge paid their tab and they followed Tuyet from well out of visual range. It was certainly possible the Emperor would sense he was being tailed, if it was him, but the Jedi still didn't think it was probably him. But, she thought, maybe whoever Tuyet was going to meet was him, and the Force had sent Scourge the dream to give them this clue through the labyrinth.

* * *

They followed her to a shady warehouse sandwiched between a row of automated factories and a busy street of cantinas and low class gambling dens. She approached the warehouse back door from the cantina street side. Keeping well out of her view, Scourge and the Jedi watched the door open. She disappeared into the darkness inside.

"We have to go in," the Jedi said.

"How might we accomplish that without a single death, the whole point of this charade?" Scourge did actually expect her to have an answer, though he had not speculated on what it might be.

"I have a plan," she said confidently. She didn't share it with him.

He didn't need to be in on it to back her up, as it turned out. She knocked on the warehouse back door. 

A man opened it. He looked dull and suspicious. "Who're you then?"

"We are friends of Tuyet's," the Jedi said, waving her hand in front of the man's face. "She told you we would be along." 

"You're friends of Tuyet's," he said slowly. "Go on, she's gone to the meeting room. They're just starting."

He wandered warily between the sturdy shelves holding crates and chests that filled the warehouse floor.

Tuyet sat with two red Sith opposite her and one who was probably a human-Sith half-breed. As Scourge had noted at the cantina, she looked entirely human, apparently rare here in Hurom. "Spice from Ord Radama," she said. "You have it?" 

"It's not as good as Ryll," one of the men protested. He had a shock of shiny black hair down to his eyebrow tendrils, and his skin was darker than the others. 

"Better for what I want it for," Tuyet said. 

The balding half-breed, who Scourge thought was the highest ranking of these obvious Syndicate flunkies, posed his question directly. "What purpose might that be?"

The red Sith woman muttered to the darker-skinned man who had argued the superiority of Ryll, "Obviously she's not making endurance stims."

"How's that?" The Ryll fan seemed puzzled. 

The half-breed glanced at them, clearly a warning to pipe down, but they both ignored it.

"It'd be terrible for that. Does the opposite thing entirely." 

"Well, my cousin makes stims out of Radaman spice all the time."

"Is that the cousin who blew up her lab a few days back?"

The half-breed had clearly had enough. He interrupted. "You know, I think we're missing the deal. Never mind the cousin. I think we were asking what purpose this spice is the best for?"

"I didn't realize I was paying for your curiosity along with my spice," Tuyet blustered. Scourge found it unconvincing. Surely the Emperor could do better.

"Oh, no, not my curiosity, no. It's our suppliers, you see. We have to keep good relations with them. And they have this peculiar curiosity about what their product is being used for."

"I don't see how that's any of their concern."

"When you contacted us, I thought you were just looking to experiment. But the amount you're buying, it's got me almost curious too."

The woman added in a lowered voice, as if sharing a confidence, "On Ziost they're doing medical research with this category of spice. Might be worth more if they're making progress."

"You here for the Empire, then? Lowball us and high sell it back home?" The half-breed made a scolding sound. "Don't think I'm going to fall for it. Let's re-negotiate the price, shall we?"

"I brought the money you asked for. You want it, or not?" Tuyet pulled a pouch out of her bodice.

The Ryll fan pulled a blaster on her. "How about you give us what it's worth to you instead?"

"Hey, Tuyet, sorry I'm late," the Jedi said, stepping out. She walked unsteadily, mimicking how Tuyet had walked when they first saw her. Playing like she was inebriated, Scourge assumed. "I was going to back you up but I thought you had it handled. Maybe I can get some of the spice? Just a sample, mm?" She shook her head. "She works at a _cantina_, right? She wants something that won't make the customers any trouble. Course she wants spice with less of a kick than Ryll. Don't know why that isn't obvious, mm?"

Tuyet looked narrowly at the Jedi, but seemed to adjust quickly. "Right. I don't see why I have to explain myself to dealers. But I don't want to be shot." She pointed at the blaster. "Could you put that away?"

The Syndicate had been mollified enough to accept the previously agreed-on money and give the girl her spice. 

"Thanks for your help," Tuyet said as they left the warehouse, "but I'm really not, uh. I'm fine now. I don't know why you followed me," her voice belied this; she thought she knew, and she didn't seem pleased by her theory, "and it turned out you were a big help. So sure, you can have a little of the spice. Then we'll be square." She scooped out a pinch of the stuff from the container. "Hold your hand out." 

The Jedi accepted the gift. Scourge stayed far enough away that he thought the Syndicate wouldn't catch on that he was with the Jedi, but he knew the girl had spotted him. 

"Go on back to your master and tell him I asked you to stop following me, will you?" She touched the Jedi's arm again, just as she had at the cantina.

"All right," the Jedi answered. She gripped the dab of spice tightly in her fist and left Tuyet's side to return to Scourge.

Tuyet glanced at them and began to walk between two of the gambling houses on the street that the warehouse backed up against. They let her get enough of a head start that they hoped she wouldn't see them continuing to follow. 

For a few blocks, it seemed to work. Then Scourge felt a dark surge in the Force and at the same moment he and the Jedi began to run. They reached the place it happened just in time to see Tuyet apparently disappearing into the slanted shadows that surrounded the old city center. One figure they both recognized had followed more slowly. One of the Servants of the Emperor's Hand.

* * *

They had taken her to the ancient Sith temple of the dark side at the center of Hurom. "They will be doing the hollowing ceremony," Scourge told the Jedi. "It prepares the body to be taken over by the Emperor. Removes the spirit already occupying it."

"So it'll kill Tuyet and let the Emperor take her over?" The Jedi shook her head. "We won't let that happen." 

"The Emperor's hand won't be dissuaded by a mind trick," Scourge warned. "We will need to kill them." He sounded pleased by this, as much as Scourge ever was pleased. The Jedi thought he sounded like a person who had been claiming something and not being believed, finally thinking he had an unassailable argument. And maybe he did.

"Don't say you told me so," the Jedi said and grinned at him. "Won't they need to kill people to make this ceremony work, anyway? We can save them."

"No, not if they do it at a place that is strong enough in the Dark Side. The old temple of Hurom already holds more than enough power for their needs."

* * *

The girl had been dosed by the Servants with the spice she'd purchased and they were holding hands in a half-circle around the altar she lay on. 

Deep purple shadows filled the room and hid from sight the Jedi and her Sith companion as they crept closer to the ceremony they intended to interrupt. The girl's eyes were closed, the Jedi saw when she drew near enough, and she had her arms folded over her chest, which moved up and down with steady deep breaths. As best the Jedi could perceive, the girl was not struggling against control, but was cooperating. She was not sure what this meant, but still convinced that it must be stopped.

Her determination to kill no one on Thule did not extend to members of the Emperor's Hand. Their lives empowered him far more than their deaths would.

Scourge seemed equally inclined to attack. She lit her lightsaber, and he lit his almost immediately. The two of them moved as one to take on the Servants. 

The ceremony disrupted, the Servants proved not as quick to fall as the Jedi might have hoped, but she was sure she and Scourge would easily prevail. 

Tuyet sat up on the slab that served as an altar. She uncrossed her arms and held both hands up, palms forward. "Cease all fighting," she said. She pushed forward with her upraised hands and the Jedi felt herself moved backward a body-length, saw that the power had also affected Scourge. The Servants dropped their weapons immediately and looked to the girl.

So she _was_ the Emperor, the Jedi thought. She'd been so sure she wasn't.

"How petty of you to interfere, Jedi," the Emperor said in Tuyet's voice. "All I was doing was living a simple cantina girl's life and you came all this way to stop me." Tuyet's sweet laughter echoed and distorted as it bounced off the intricately runed stone walls. "You are more like me than I had thought."

The Jedi didn't see how that followed at all, but she caught Scourge's sharp look. She wondered if she'd be able to ask him later, and if he'd answer her honestly if she did.

"You are incapable of living a simple life. You'd have tried to eat the lives of everyone on this world just as you did before. I won't fall for your tricks." The Jedi held with all her might to the light side of the force, keeping her voice even and calm. She was only stating facts that everyone in this room knew. There were no emotions tied to the facts. Killing and devouring all life was what the Emperor did. Stopping him was the calling the Jedi and Scourge were dedicated to.

"You saw with your own senses that this part of me is not dark in that way, Jedi. Other bodies for such pursuits, ones with greater power in the Force, with more sway in destiny; did I not tell you on Dromund Kaas that I also intended to live ordinary lives?"

"You won't have Tuyet's life. It is hers, not yours." 

"Let us make an exchange, then. Tuyet's life for the lives of my Servants. Let them go in peace, Jedi, and I will leave her to your care." 

The Jedi looked at Scourge. His face was closed, uncommunicative. She knew it wasn't a good bargain. Leave the Emperor these tools in return for one useless cantina worker? Scourge would judge this a poor trade. He would be -- not angry with her, he did not feel that emotion anymore than any other -- he would think less of her. She hated that, but she could not trade an innocent life away. "It's a bargain, then."

Scourge turned his lightsaber off and put it away. "This time I will let you live, toadies of the Emperor," he said, "but should we meet again, it will not go so easy for you."

* * *

Scourge wondered, later, whether the Emperor had been right. Was he staying with the Jedi because of how similar they were? It could be. The differences were certainly not why, other than the qualitative difference that the Jedi would not attempt to kill everyone on any planet to gain power. But he did think, still thought, that the Empire would be best off if he could persuade his Jedi to take the throne. 

Someday, he would. He thought this little adventure had given him a new tool to guide her in that direction. 

He had told her he lost all emotion when he became immortal, along with his ability to taste food and see color and feel warmth. But he knew that couldn't really be the case. He still had his connection to the Dark Side, which was impossible if that had been true. It was like this: he could not see color, but color still existed, the light reflected from a colored surface would still be different, and colored light still looked darker or lighter to his eyes. Color was there and could affect him despite his inability to see it. This was also how his emotions had become, he believed. 

And while he could not feel them, he could see their effects on himself and on others. On the Jedi, when she sat so close to him in the cantina on Thule and he whispered to her. She had allowed herself to enjoy it. Jedi had no need for such comforts and pleasures, she had told him not long ago.

He stood closer to her than he usually did, allowing his chest to press against her back, bending his head to whisper against her cheek. "I have been wondering, Jedi. What color are your eyes?"


End file.
